


kindle, kid, and kaboodle

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: (only using that tag because Crowe is here when she shouldn't be), Cats, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Father-Son Relationship, Fic Exchange, Gen, Inspired by Photography, Introspection, Noctis Lucis Caelum and Cats, Parent-Child Relationship, Pre-Brotherhood, Pre-Canon, Timeline What Timeline, Warm and Furry Feelings, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, mostly canon-compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-03 23:19:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14579814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Before Regis can spend another long weary night brooding (after another long weary working day), Noctis turns up with three very unexpected friends.





	kindle, kid, and kaboodle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SludgyCult](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SludgyCult/gifts).



> Written for [the Noctis Fic/Art Exchange 2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Noctis_Fic_or_Art_Exchange), for recipient [PinkyCandyDive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkyCandydive/pseuds/PinkyCandydive).

Golden collars, black cloaks, self-important expressions, and barely-veiled smirks: and he meets every single unspoken challenge with his head held high, with his eyes perfectly level and -- he sees it again whenever he looks in the mirror that hangs on the wall, that opposes his desk -- cold. Cold like winter nights and the depths of the sea that protects Insomnia’s flank. Sea that had borne him here, back to the place where he’d taken his first breaths and his first steps.

The cold and the sea that had taken everything he loved away from him, and left him with just one, just one reason to keep on going -- 

And he inclines his head, formal and regal, to the backs of the ministers and the ambassadors. Easy to stay on his feet, with the help of his brace and his cane. Easy, compared to spending hours and hours keeping his small neutral smile on; the smile pulls at the muscles of his jaw, the muscles anchored all around his mouth. Smile that he has to keep on until long after the door’s closed on his tiresome appointments, on his smirking visitors, and even then -- even then, he has to tap his fingertip against the head of his cane -- tiny ringing note in the hush of the office -- and in response, the Glaive standing next to the door pushes the little golden button in its little ornate housing.

Flash of red light above that door.

“Safe now?” he asks, softly. He barely moves his lips.

“Safe now, Your Majesty,” is the response. Rough low female voice today: and it’s hard to recognize Crowe Altius in her frock coat and deep cowl, and the tall laced boots going all the way up past her knees. 

“And the other thing?” 

He envies her the sharp free coldness of her smirk, the sheer pure ease of the movement in her shoulders as she rolls them, and then holds up one hand, to click the fingertips together and the sound echoes, in time with the pulse of the blue-white flame that she summons. 

Blue of magic that flows through her, that settles onto the walls and soars into the shadows of the vaulted ceiling, silencing even the restless echoes of the room, the whispers of the sea far below and outside of the Citadel’s physical walls.

“Thank you, Glaive Altius,” he says, and then he falls into his chair, relieved enough to hide his face in his hands. 

“Will you require anything else of me?”

Oh, how he hates that question, and yet it’s asked of him, every day, in a hundred little transactions, in a hundred little interactions.

What he wants, what he needs, that’s lost to him forever, and not even the constant tide can wash it back towards him, when it washes back the little treasures that others have cruelly carelessly let go of.

But he tells her precisely none of those things, and instead he says, “Please send on the usual words to the nursery staff, and then you may consider yourself at liberty for -- I understand you have asked for a few days of leave?”

Quick nod, and the bounce of not-quite-dark hair. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I shan’t ask,” he says, and he smiles at her -- small as the others he favors his irksome guests with, but warmer. 

“Better not,” he hears her say, and then she’s heading out the door.

Leaving him alone to send his own actual power into the rest of the room: and to the silencing spell that she’s already cast, he adds a little something of his own. Wards, flickering, pulsing. A wall of healing light. Not for him, of course: it’s been decades since he’s been able to benefit from his own magic like this.

Not for him, but for -- 

He’ll stride through the days and the nights and never mutter about the cold leaching into the carpeted floors, never mutter about the dust that hangs thick in the dark corners, never mutter about the empty corridors that are only ever filled with his own faltering steps: he’ll stride through, and forsake his own comfort because he’s already giving up his own health, his own days, his own power. To the Glaives go the sheer destructive force of his own abilities; to the Wall the pure enduring strength of his own will -- what he’s still got left of it. What he’s still able to hang on to.

The nights are growing longer and they are creeping up on him, and now his knee throbs in renewed pain and protest, against the extended hours of his day, of his toil.

No place to put his feet up so he can rest.

As he waits he stirs the neat heaps of paper with one and then another of his pens, arrayed in a mostly straight line in their felt-lined tray. 

One anomaly in that line of precious objects, one different thing in the elaborate inlaid colors on the barrels. Right in the center, though he’d never even lifted it to place it there -- not deliberately, he thinks, and not unconsciously, either. Surely those sneering ministers would have noticed, had he picked up the pen that seems to have gotten mixed in with the ones that he normally uses.

Short stub, and a chunk of a body, in smooth blond wood. Cool on his fingertips. Only traces left of the ink that’s on the white sticker decorating the black cap, and only enough to trace out three letters, in ghostly lines.

CT S

His hands move almost of their own accord, clicking off the cap, and he reveals the steel nib with its round tip. Separation on the tines -- perhaps they’re a little farther apart than they should be -- and there are only faint traces of bright blue ink on the metal, and it makes him wonder how much practice this pen has been through -- how much of the ABCs it’s already had to write. Sentences moving from blocky, squared-off printed letters, to the joined-up loops of an angular cursive. 

The name label’s been scratched off around the edges, and it makes him wonder what would still be beneath that, should the pen’s user manage to peel it completely away -- 

Speaking of which: unless he’s missed his guess, where is his son?

Ping, ping, muffled on his desk.

For a long moment he stares at the com badge that he never uses, that he never wears -- only carries around from place to place in his hand. 

Ping, ping, calling his attention.

His finger shakes when he reaches for the button that keys the thing on, and he almost misses it, but he manages to clear his throat and remember what he has to say: “Throne.”

“Sorry, there’ll be a slight delay in Prince Noctis’s schedule,” and it’s one of the nursery’s staff speaking, which helps his anxiety not at all. “Glaive Altius told me it might take a few more minutes before she can finish this, this thing she’s doing.”

“Which is what, exactly, if one may inquire?” he asks, formally, carefully.

“The Prince is safe, he’s just being insistent right now,” is the woman’s response -- and sure enough, hard on the heels of that last word he can hear a high steady cheering sound. 

Noctis, cheering?

He puts the com badge to his ear. 

And it picks up the high-pitched sigh, and the bright laughter woven into the words. “One more, Crowe, I know there’s one more, you have to find him!”

“I’m trying!” The badge picks up Altius’s response, too.

Regis clears his throat. “Ma’am,” he says, to the person who might still be holding on the line. 

“Your Majesty.” Response, and its alacrity.

“I’d like a word with the Prince, if you would pass the com to him.”

“Yes,” comes the response after a long beat of silence, and then there’s a squelch that makes him wince because it’s loud and it’s a stressed shriek, but hard on its heels is:

“Hello?”

“Noctis,” he says.

“Hi Dad!”

“Hello, son. Now what are you trying to find out there -- or what are you trying to have Glaive Altius find out there?”

Sound, like a moan, like a sigh -- he almost worries, until he hears Noctis say, in his grave childlike tones, “It was going to be a surprise for you.”

He sighs, too, and doesn’t let his son hear his relief. “I think I would like to know about my surprise.”

“Okay,” and he hears the long whistling note of defeat and a missing tooth in his son’s voice. “I found something in the gardens. And they wouldn’t let me get the things but, but I said I wanted to.”

“Something?” He hopes he sounds encouraging. He’s not too sure. He can only listen to the voice on the other end of the connection.

“Something I wanted to show you.”

“Aha! Got it!” And again his bodyguard’s voice, rising, laughing. This time she sounds pleased. This time she sounds happy.

“You did it? Yes!” And Noctis, too, is laughing. “We’re coming!”

“On our way,” and the last voice he hears on the com is the staff-person, and -- there are sounds, other noises, moving past her, or with her.

How can he hold on to that light? To that memory of his son’s laughter, in the evening of the Citadel, in the gathering shadows of its gardens? How can he hold on to that carefree recklessness, that sweet childlike confidence? How can he keep it as a light in his heart, to fight off the long mourning seconds and hours and minutes of the nights in their endless march onward? How can he raise it high above the constant sough of the sea and its churning waves, like a beacon, like a call home?

His son: the one thing he can hold on to, now that he understands what it will mean to have to let him go.

Now that he understands the terrible dreams, the promises that have been spoken to him: promises of war and of weeping and of a pain that he’ll have to endure, alone, silent.

Not for the first time his tears on the papers on the desk, on the affairs of this crumbling state.

And he only has a moment to weep: he doesn’t forget, he can’t forget, that he cannot show these truths to anyone. Not to his son, not to anyone else.

The one who might have understood his secrets has gone away, and not even the waves can wash her memory from his mourning heart.

Hastily he takes off his jacket, and hastily he scrubs his face on the upper part of his shirt-sleeve. The black material will hide the traces of his salt and his sorrow.

He cannot and will not darken these days, not for his son’s sake.

And as if the thought summons the boy: the door flies open and Regis feels his heart swell, and grow, and it might leap out of his chest when he smiles, and he opens his arms. “Noct.”

“Dad! Look! Look what I found!”

Heap of material in his arms, and in the arms of the women following in his wake -- or at least Regis thinks they’re heaps of material, until one of them moves and then -- then it falls -- 

“No!”

Noctis, astonishing in his speed, running to catch the ball of fluff -- 

Fluff?

But it’s fluff that unfurls and stretches and Regis catches a glimpse of wide wide pale-blue eyes -- catches a glimpse of paws, bright brilliant orange tail in its stripes that drops to the floor, splay-legged, looking actually surprised in its safe landing.

A kitten with orange fur and a white tail and ears. 

“Oh! You’re okay, you’re okay,” and he watches as Noctis wiggles his fingers at the kitten -- as the kitten noses at his wrist and then climbs up his arm and onto his shoulder without any fear, without any hesitation. “Quick, you’re good, you’re good -- ”

Two more kittens are placed near his feet and they yowl for his attention, high-pitched cries, tails held aloft: one of them is smoke-gray, handsome coeurl-spotted, with green eyes; the third, a little larger than the others, is sleek black and amber-eyed. 

Before he can turn his attention to his son, and to these strays, he bows to the women. “Thank you for seeing to him.”

“He’s no trouble at all,” he hears Altius say, and she’s grinning when she flicks a fingertip at the ceiling -- refreshing the spells -- and walks out the door. “He’s fun to be around.”

He has to agree, when the doors are closed and he and Noctis are the only humans left in the room -- and even then, Noctis chooses that moment to crouch down on his hands and knees and meow, loudly, and the kittens raise a discordant chorus around him.

“Hush, hush,” he laughs, and he carefully sits in his chair. “Come, Noctis. Introduce me to your friends.”

Gap-toothed grin, that’s only the first response: the warmth of Noctis crowding against his good knee is the second. “This is Quick, and that’s Warm, and that’s Flower,” the boy says, pointing to the orange cat, and then to the gray, and then to the black. “They’re nice. But they kept trying to run away when I wanted to bring them to you.”

“Quick, and Warm, and Flower,” Regis says, quietly. “Those are interesting names.”

As he watches, Warm goes over to curl up on Noctis’s shoe.

Of the kittens, Flower seems to want nothing to do with everyone else -- until Regis spots it making its way to the door. Until he sees it sit down, every line in its small body poised and tense -- watchful, he thinks. Like a guardian of some kind.

And Quick scampers in circles, trying to catch the piece of string that Noctis is waving, and the kitten actually makes contact with the makeshift toy about half the time, and Noctis makes encouraging sounds.

He braces himself for the inevitable question. For pleading blue eyes.

“Dad can we keep them?”

He opens his mouth to say a firm and gentle “No.”

What comes out instead is: “Do you know how to take care of cats? And of little ones like these?”

Noctis blinks, and blinks. Puts the back of his hand to his mouth: he seems to make the gesture when he wants to think. “I know you have to feed them. Give them water. Clean up after them. Babies. Human ones and cat ones. Same, right?”

“We can do that, yes. But we cannot teach them how to be cats.”

“Teach them how to be cats?”

He ruffles the hair on Noctis’s head. “What can a cat do, that a human can’t do?”

Noctis turns his hand around so he’s covering his mouth properly. Hums, a little, as he thinks: and then he tilts his head, and says, “Catch food. They chase their food.”

“Yes, that’s good. Cats hunt for their food.”

“Like a mouse. I watched a cat hunt a mouse. What do cats eat?”

“Birds, mice, fish,” he says. “And many other things, of course.”

“And they can catch all of those?”

“If they learn how to. But they cannot learn from humans. We can use things like fishing rods to catch fish, but they can’t.”

Noctis bursts out laughing. 

He smiles, too, and points to the orange kitten. “Can you imagine that little one putting a hook on a line?”

“No,” Noctis says, still shaking with laughter. 

“Can you imagine that one on your foot making a glass of milk?”

“No!” And another blink. “Cats drink milk.”

“No, they don’t,” he says, and shakes his head a little. “After they grow a little bigger, milk that isn’t from their mother, or from another cat, will give them upset stomachs.”

Noctis’s half-sad and half-disgusted expression makes him smile. 

“Flower can’t write,” he hears Noctis add, after a moment. “Not now. Not never, right?”

“Not ever,” he says, gently, correcting. “And no. Not ever. Flower has a different kind of hand. We call it a paw. Not for using pens.”

“Aaawww.” 

He watches as Noctis picks up the kitten on his foot -- Warm, he thinks Noctis had called it. 

Warm is quiet and doesn’t fight the hands holding it: not when those same hands bring it up to Noctis’s eye level, not when Noctis kisses it between the eyes.

Quick, true to its name, skitters and scampers around the legs of Regis’s chair, until Noctis clicks his tongue -- at which point the kitten leaps straight for his chest, leaving wisps of orange on the black of the shirt. 

Noctis kisses that kitten, too, and then goes to the door to do the same for Flower. 

Then he moves the other two kittens to the door, and sits with them, and says, quietly, “I wish I was a cat, too. I’d teach you all the things you need to know. I’d help you grow big and strong and then we could all play together. Catch food together. Maybe someone in the gardens will take care of you for me.”

The kittens must understand at least the gentle sadness in the boy’s words, because they start crying around him, high keening distress.

And Noctis looks up with tears bright and unshed in his eyes. “Dad. Just one night. Please.”

It takes so little to wipe those tears away. “But, Noctis. Promise me. In the morning we’ll take them to the gardens and look for someone who might be able to find an older cat they can be with.”

“I’ll help look for an older cat, too,” he hears Noctis say, solemnly.

He thinks about paws moving in the boy’s bed, and the real possibility of having to wash all the sheets and pillows and mattresses after.

It’s no hardship at all, to say, “One night. All right.”

Noctis hums to the kittens all the way to his own bedroom, and he lifts each of them onto his pillows before holding out his arms, in turn.

“You’re much too big to be a kitten, now,” he laughs, as he ruffles Noctis’s hair once again, and holds him close, and rubs his back. “Soon you’ll be bigger even than the most pampered of house cats.”

“I’d like to be a cat,” is Noctis’s response, between massive yawns.

“Then dream of being a cat,” he says, depositing Noctis onto his blankets.

The kittens crowd in on the boy: Quick settles next to his ear, and Warm and Flower huddle in on his shoulder. 

“I’m sure your companions will help you think -- cat-like thoughts.”

Noctis’s grin is bright and sleepy and brilliant and only fades when he falls truly asleep.

And Regis sits with him, and watches over him, and slowly the world outside eases away: the sound of the sea and the weight of the world and the grief in his footsteps.

**Author's Note:**

> The kittens' fur colors were based on this cute [photo post](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/41815644778/reblogging-because-i-got-tagged-in-this-one) from Tumblr.
> 
> ///
> 
> A group of cats is referred to as a clowder or a glaring; a group of kittens is called a litter or a kindle.
> 
> ///
> 
> ninemoons42 on Tumblr: [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)


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